Trolley—New Orleans

Robert Frank

1955 · Gelatin silver print · Photographs

In 1955-56 Frank traveled the United States from New York to California, making the photographs that would constitute his landmark book The Americans (1958). The journey would dramatically alter the artist's impression of America. Frank found less of the freedom and tolerance imagined by postwar Europeans, and more alienation and racial prejudice simmering beneath the seemingly happy surface of the Eisenhower era. Not surprisingly, The Americans provoked an outcry of public controversy. Half of the country felt that Frank, a recent émigré, had betrayed his adopted home; half felt his criticism was not only warranted, but necessary. Frank's disillusionment is poignantly embodied in this elegiac view-now Katrina-haunted-of somber passengers riding a streetcar in New Orleans.

Artist

Robert Frank

Date

1955

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Gilman Collection, Purchase, Ann Tenenbaum and Thomas H. Lee Gift, 2005